Pros and Cons of Wearing a Sauna Suit

According to a series of Gallup polls conducted throught the 2000s, about 60 percent of Americans want to lose weight. Wearing a rubber sauna suit while exercising is just one of countless tactics people try in hopes of achieving their weight-loss goals. Wearing a suit raises your core temperature and increases the amount of sweat produced during exercise; however, their use produces few long-term benefits for weight loss and can be unsafe in many situations. Talk with your doctor before using a sauna suit for weight loss or any other purpose.

Short-Term Weight Loss

Using a sauna suit is a highly effective but potentially dangerous tool for facilitating short-term weight loss. When you wear a sauna suit, you lose water weight in the form of sweat. This type of weight loss is common among contestants in sports such as wrestling, boxing and mixed martial arts who must meet a certain weight limit prior to competing. While sauna suits are good for shedding water weight in the short term, there are few long-term weight-loss benefits associated with use of sauna suits. Wearing a suit does not increase the number of calories burned during exercise, and any water weight lost promptly returns when you rehydrate. If you do use a sauna suit, you should drink fluids immediately after exercise, as wearing the suit increases your core body temperature and can lead to to heatstroke, kidney damage and even death.

Psoriasis Treatment

While there is no evidence that sauna suits help with long-term weight loss, they can be beneficial for individuals who suffer from psoriasis. Psoriasis is a common skin disease that causes red patches and lesions to appear on the skin. Sauna suits are a key component of occlusion therapy, in which the patient wears the suit for a certain period of time each day. Occlusion therapy with a sauna suit is used to reduce lesions and improve skin condition. Although researchers do not entirely understand why occlusion therapy helps with psoriasis, research published in the International Journal of Dermatology suggests that the sweat produced while in a sauna suit reduces lesions by raising the calcium content of skin suffering from psoriasis to normal levels.

Sauna Suit Myths

Marketing materials provided by some sauna suits vendors claim that wearing a suit increases the quantity of calories and fat that you burn during a workout. However, there is no documented scientific evidence that sauna suits help metabolize fat at a faster rate or burn calories more efficiently. Some sauna suit makers also claim their product will remove toxins from the body through sweat; while the body does routinely eliminate some toxins via sweat, there is no evidence that using a suit increases the rate of toxin elimination.

Warnings

Some prominent athletic governing bodies warn against the use of sauna suits for weight loss and athletic training. The National Athletic Trainers' Association strongly suggests that athletes avoid using sauna suits due to the risk of dehydration and serious heat-related illnesses. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, which is the governing body for major college sports, went a step further in banning use of sauna suits among governed athletes after several college wrestlers died while using sauna suits to cut weight. If you do choose to wear a sauna suit while exercising, you should drink water before, during and after exercise to ensure that you don't develop a temperature regulation or dehydration-related illness.